The other day I was on 40m and heard a signal with very bad key clicks. It was a very strong station, too, from somewhere near Columbus, OH. I listened to the QSO he was having for a while, and heard him say that his transmitter was homebrew. Unfortunately, the other station didn’t report any clicks.
I decided to send him a QSL card, informing him of the problem. Now, I’m kind of wondering if I did the right thing or if I should have left it up to the Official Observers. What do you think?
Ronny Risinger says
I think you did the right thing. Often, one feels out of place letting someone know of an ‘issue’ that might embarrass them. This time, you identified key clicks, but it could have been similar to a situation I had last week.
During SCR, we (my high school club, K5LBJ) heard a school operating. Upon looking them up on QRZ, we discovered that their license had expired. Rather than letting the student be totally embarrassed (she was doing an outstanding job, by the way), we decided to send a QSL card noting the license issue. A discrete correction without public embarrassment will probably obtain action without unnecessary negative consequences.
You did the right thing.
-73-
Ronny, KC5EES
Austin, TX
Keith, N8EB says
Although I don’t all that much CW, I once had someone tell me I had “clicks and other noise” on my 2-meter mobile rig. I wasn’t aware of any problems, but I started asking everyone I talked to for a few days and all had the same report for me. It ended up being a problem with my PTT switch on the rig, which ended up being a quick and inexpensive fix.
The bottom line is it was a problem with my rig and I appreciated someone letting me know – you did the right thing!